


The Magic Helmet

by jspringsteen



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Referenced canonical character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:04:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jspringsteen/pseuds/jspringsteen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snafu is sure that Ack Ack's helmet has magical powers. Sledge doesn't believe him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Magic Helmet

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://davidcoverdaleshairspray.tumblr.com)

Snafu swore up and down that the helmet was magical. After Ack Ack’s death, he had gone up to the place where the Skipper had breathed his last breath, picked up his helmet, and exchanged it for his own. At the time he didn’t know why he did it - he just felt a strong compulsion, as if the same breeze that blew up the chalk-white dust into their eyes had whispered it in his ear.  
     After he had begun wearing Ack Ack’s helmet, Snafu claimed, miracles had happened to him. He’d found a mouthful of water in his canteen after he’d sworn, two hours earlier, that it was empty. His aim with the mortar seemed to be dead-on all the time now. He’d got more than five hours of sleep in a row the previous night. And most importantly, it had saved his life; during their attack on the Peleliu hills a bullet had ricocheted off his helmet with a *pang*, and Snafu knew that had it inched slightly more to the right, it would have hit his temple and that would have been that.  
     He was explaining it to Sledge in his slow drawl so that even to Sledge, in whose hometown they stretched vowels like they stretched cowhides to put in their corridors, the story seemed to ooze along like molasses out of an overturned jar.   
     “I’m tellin you, Sledgehammuh,” Snafu said, picking up the rag with which he had taken to polishing the helmet at his leisure, “it’s magic. It’s voodoo. Ack Ack’s spirit is still alive in this helmet, and he’s helping me. All I gotta do is offer somethin up to him. Then he’ll never leave me as long as I keep his helmet.”  
     Sledge was making a show of removing the dirt under his fingernails with the point of his knife while shaking his head in disbelief. In combat, he had already heard a dozen superstitious tales that bordered on the obsessive compulsive from soldiers who believed that, lucky as their amulets made them, they had become invincible, only to be proven wrong by a Jap sniper the next day. Guys who believed that carrying your rifle in a certain way, putting on the left boot before the right, sleeping with their helmet under their left arm made all the difference. Of course, thought Sledge whenever he saw a Catholic soldier sneak a kiss to the cross around his neck, all superstition is false. There is only the Lord, and those who pray are protected by him. That’s what the Bible says. (Though, if he were to be very honest with himself, his faith in this last principle had wavered somewhat after he’d become familiar with the sound of voices praying feverishly during a nightly shelling–whispers flowing like a snake hissing, gliding through the grass, proof that indeed “there are no atheists in foxholes”–only to see these good Christians die one after another at the hands of the Japanese.)  
     He had talked Christianity with Snafu before, when Snafu had seen him reading his psalter and had asked him the question, in that tone that always made you doubt whether he was making fun of you or not, whether Eugene believed that if he died with his bayonet stuck in a Jap he’d go to heaven and get welcomed by Jesus just the same. This had been at the beginning of his deployment, when he had yet to confront any Japs up front, and he had answered with religious fervor that they were fighting the good fight, all of them, against the insidious atheists of Japan, and that God would be by their side always. But with the bodies piling up on both sides and Ack Ack added to that pile, Sledge had come to doubt the righteousness of the war. Still, he considered Snafu’s superstitions, charms and amulets mere Bayou baloney.  
     “Well, go on, Snafu.” Sledge put his knife away, crossed his arms, and stared at the helmet. “Show me how it works.”  
     Snafu laughed, slowly, and shook his head.  
     “Naw, Sledgehammuh. I can’t give it *orders*. I can’t make no bunny pop out of it or nuthin. Just you watch. When we get in a scrape, you’ll see. It’s magic.”  
     They spent a fairly quiet day improving their foxholes (Snafu calling out to Peck that he should get himself a nice gilded frame to hang up his picture of Cathy on the planks that supported the walls of his foxhole and give it a nice homey touch), but no fierce combat ensued that day. Sledge watched Snafu closely, waiting for a sign of the magic helmet, but saw none. He remarked upon Snafu’s superstition once again, but the other just shook his head and smiled.  
     “Just you wait, Sledgehammuh.”  
     Sledge rolled his eyes and curled on his side to sleep.

He was rudely awaked by the sound of his name. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and saw, to his terror, Snafu strangling a dark figure who was panting in Japanese.   
     “Sledge!” whispered Snafu, jabbing him in the leg with his boot heel. “Shoot the bastard! Shoot him!”   
     Sledge fumbled around for his gun, found it, and shot the Japanese soldier in the forehead. The shot echoed around them, and there was rustling in other foxholes, and worried whispers asking what was going on. Snafu threw the Japanese soldier to the side with a disgusted expression, then turned to Sledge and, unexpectedly, his face lit up with triumph.   
     “It was my helmet, Sledge. I’m telling you.”  
     “Oh, and I just happened to miss it again, did I?” Sledge said, his heart still pounding with the terror of having been so close to death again, while Snafu didn’t appear distressed at all.  
     “Yeah, you did. I was just sittin here, keepin watch, when all of a sudden I hear a rustling on the ground, you know, like a snake gliding over the ground. I was just about to turn my head when I heard a clang. That Nip was gunna slit my neck, but he banged his knife on my helmet cuz it was so dark! The helmet warned me, Sledge! So I grabbed him and that’s when you came in.”  
     Sledge scratched behind his ear. He still didn’t believe Snafu’s story, but at this point he just wanted to see it to settle his judgement. He decided that he would pay even more attention to Snafu from now on, to see the helmet at work.  
     He rolled back on his side, thanking God, very silently, that he heard Snafu still breathing next to him

***

The next day, Sledge witnessed the power of the helmet.  
     They were piling it on the Japanese, mortar rounds disappearing like candy in the reach of a toddler, and at one point were told to fall back. They quickly dissembled the mortar, heaving the equipment on their shoulders, and started to run. A grenade exploded right behind them; the blast blew Snafu’s helmet off his head and it landed right in front of him. He tripped over it and fell face-forward on the ground. Sledge watched open-mouthed as bullets zipped right over the top of Snafu’s head to bite one, two, three, four soldiers running before Snafu in their backs. He couldn’t believe it.   
     But the helmet struck gold again later that day. Snafu was using it to pour some water from a spring over his head, just to wash his face but in a way that made it look like a kind of baptism ritual that infused him with the power of Ack Ack, when a thunderous explosion shook the ground and made him drop the helmet in the spring. It floated off, and Snafu dived after it still wearing his full equipment. When he reached it a few yards upstream and rose out of the water to put it back on his head, he looked at the reeds growing on the bank of the spring, only to see a dozen pairs surprised Japanese eyes stare back at him. Acting on his reflexes, he sprayed the surprised Japanese company hiding there, joined quickly by Sledge and the others who had followed the shouts and shots.   
     Sledge couldn’t call it “a lucky break” any more. He now stuck closely by Snafu, wondering what else the helmet would do, and secretly hoping its power would rub off on him a little bit. Sometimes Snafu said he could hear Ack Ack’s voice, and Sledge discreetly strained his ears to hear the Skipper, but he couldn’t hear anything and he felt a little foolish. Snafu made small offers to the helmet - when they were resting he would place a lighted cigarette on top of it, which smouldered away on the painted metal and dotted the green outside with streaks of silver.  
     “Never stand when you can sit, eh Skipper,” Snafu would say. Then he and Sledge would reminisce about their former Captain, and pour a little water on the helmet if they had some left. Sometimes Sledge picked it up and started polishing it, absent-mindedly, feeling like he was rubbing a lamp and waiting for the djinn to come out and grant him three wishes. One: keep me alive. Two: keep my buddies alive. Three: let us get out of this hellhole tomorrow. But every tomorrow dawned just like the other ones. Sledge grew cynical with himself about his belief in the helmet, and when Snafu was off taking a leak, he told it sternly:   
     “Skipper, if you’re in there, let me know, so I can go back to normal and let Snafu  stick to his damned foolishness.”   
Just then, something like a tremor, no, more like a power surge seemed to ripple the metal; a split second later the earth around Sledge started to vibrate. He whirled around and saw a Japanese tank driving up to their place of rest, its gun moving from right to left like a butterfly’s snout sniffing out the best nectar. Officers were screaming, everybody dove for cover. Sledge stared in horror at the helmet in his hands as the tank boomed overhead; not only had it foreboded another attack, but he now began to be afraid that Snafu, still out there without his helmet, was history. He peeped over the ridge of the small hill he was crouching behind and saw Snafu, also crouching, behind a tree stump about two yards away on the other side of the tank. He was pinned down; as soon as he made a move the tank would blast him to pieces. It was a miracle the Japs hadn’t seen him yet. Snafu was gesturing wildly, pretending to put something on his head, and Sledge looked down at the helmet.  
     He whispered, “Help us, Skipper,” and, rising slightly, threw the helmet towards Snafu. The other caught it and put it on his curls, as the tank’s gun swung in his direction and prepared to fire. Snafu quickly leapt to Sledge’s hiding place, his big eyes shining with relief and fear, and crouched beside him. They heard the order to retreat and grabbed their bags and their rifles, slithering over the dusty ground to relative safety. When they reached an old concrete wall, the CO bade them stay put while he talked to regiment on the radio. Sledge felt Snafu's eyes on him.  
     The attack was deflected, and while the sun raced towards the horizon they dug in for the night. Sledge was lying on his back, watching the stars prick holes in the dark fabric of the night sky, when he heard Snafu whisper: “Thanks, Skipper.” He turned his head to see Snafu press his lips to the cold metal, briefly, before tucking it against his chest.   
     “You better thank him,” Sledge said, rolling on his side so they were facing each other.  
     “He saved your life again.” He wasn’t sure if he believed it was really Ack Ack’s spirit any more; but he felt there was some force surrounding it that he had to respect.   
     Snafu smiled, and regarded Sledge from under his heavy lids.   
     “I wasn’t thanking him for that.”  
     “Well, what for?”  
     “For making you spend time with me.” And without another word, Snafu closed his eyes and slept, a smile ghosting over his lips.   
     And Sledge, feeling a wave of warmth rush over him quite unrelated to the heavy humid shroud placed on him by the jungle, settled in for his watch.


End file.
